Hinata, Motherless Before Motherhood
by wjames260
Summary: This is just a two part story. They were gonna be separate one-shots, but I like them as a pair more. The first is a small moment between Naruto and Hinata when they were kids. The second is a long moment of Hinata, as a mother, waiting. They probably exist in the same universe as "After the War."
1. My Mother Is A Fish!

My Mother is a Fish - A NaruHina fanfiction inspired by Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying'

Across the schoolyard is a boy with blonde hair, so messy and unkept that she's pretty sure he rarely washes it or brushes it. He wears a bright orange jumpsuit and a pair of teal goggles. In class he slouches in his seat and scratches his name on his desk and stares at girls or out the windows with some glaze over his eyes.

His expression is always some sort of extreme, and he never keeps it hidden: extremely dumfounded, extremely ecstatic, extremely bored, extremely rageful, extremely hateful, extremely joyful, extremely lonely.

Then, there is his voice, so high-pitched and abrasive, like some piece of metal grinding against another piece of metal. He shouts and makes declarations and bursts with sudden laughter or something like a barking noise. He rambles and babbles and talks about himself. He tells lies and grins with his eyes closed and when people laugh at him and walk away he stops grinning and just watches them.

Then, there is his hygiene. His clothing is full of dirt and grass stains and smells like the unwashed private parts of a growing boy. His face is always smeared with grease and his teeth are always a bit yellow and crooked. His breath always smells like ramen and onions and old milk.

He is altogether unappealing.

And yet, when he passes her desk, her heart beats faster, her face gets hot and she can't look anywhere except at her hands. When they speak she stutters and her mind drowns with input and her voice catches in her throat. When she sees him cheating in sparring class or on exams, or when she sees him thieving fruits and bread from the market or graffitiing on walls and signs and statues, she feels some glow in her chest. She doesn't know why.

Like her, his grades are poor, dead last.

Then, there are the three dash marks on each cheek, like dark cuts or scars, and - to her - it seems somehow related to why he sits alone on that swing in the schoolyard, staring at everyone, and why his parents never pick him up, and why she's heard adults whisper about him in tones that sound sinister, worried, cutting and secretive, like each whispered sentence is a knife grinding against whetstone.

She was told never to speak to him. Instead, she watches him and thinks about the time she saw him training in the forest, and even after collapsing he kept shouting that he'd surpass the Hokage.

And, the time those older boys bullied her and he stepped between them and they beat him up and tore his scarf. The way he lied in the snow, full of bruises, his body shaking, some groan escaping his throat as her attendant whisked her away.

She was told never to speak to him, so instead she watches him and imagines what he would do if he had a father like her's and a sister like her's. If he lived in a mansion so big he might not see anyone he loves all day, with a family full of people who dote on him but never look him in the face and stop speaking when she enters a room. If he traveled out of the village most weekends to meet with potential future suitors, older boys who appraise her with shifting, casual glances and scoff when she drops the cup in a tea ceremony. What if he spent most suppers in silence, speaking when spoken to? What if he had alien eyes that frighten people? What if his mother were a fish, too?

Yesterday, after school, she found him sitting on the swing, the chains creaking slowly, shadows of the overhead leaves fluttering about his face. As she approached, her knees shaking, her hands in her pockets, he raised his head and grinned wildly but she could see the emptiness behind it all. Intending to thank him for stopping her bullies, she opened her mouth, but her voice died. He stopped smiling and didn't say anything, and the input rushed and scrambled around her head.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"My mother is a fish," she told him. He stared at her, jumped out from the seat and stuck his tongue out before running away. She watched him run, how his little legs kicked up dust and dirt, how his orange jumpsuit almost glowed in the light of late afternoon.

' _But it's true,_ ' she wanted to yell out. She tried, she opened her mouth, a noise emitted, she said the sentence, but her voice was too small and he was far away, hopping over a distant fence and disappearing past a dip in the landscape.

Standing there by the swing, she remembered the time her mother left for the hospital saying she'd have a new sister. When she came back, there was the sister, so small and tiny, wrapped in a white blanket, a fuzz of dark hair on her scalp, her head too small for her big, white eyes. Her father carried her sister in the crook of his left arm, and in his right he carried a jug of water with a koi in it. When she knelt to look at the fish, she saw it's eyes were blank, too, but black and shining. He poured the koi into the pond outside and then watched it swim for four hours before retiring to bed. Now, her sister is older and the koi still swims about the pond. Every morning, she watches it before school.

Today, she sees him sitting on the swing, again, gazing out at all the parents picking up their children. She stands in the midst of the crowd and hears the voice of her attendant. Turning, she sees him standing across the yard, talking to a teacher. Setting her face with determination, she breaks out from the throng of people and runs over to the boy on the swing and opens her mouth, but he speaks first.

"My mother-" he starts and then hesitates, the word 'mother' sounding formal and blockish, he gulps and keeps going, "-is a, a _wildebeest_!"

Closing her mouth, she just watches him. The chattering crowd recedes into the back of her mind. The blushing in her cheeks recedes, too, and the cram of input in her head goes slack and clears up, like muddy water being filtered.

She's heard of that animal once, but cannot not remember when and does not know what it looks like. But, she imagines a hairy, wild creature full of claws and teeth sitting in the pond outside her home. It's fur matted wet against it's body. It's jaw grinning, it's gums black, it's teeth white. The creature sits there and watches her, howls and looks away.

"Wow, cool," she says, a little smile emerging in her face. Grinning, he laughs through his teeth, but does not close his eyes.

5


	2. Hinata, Housemother

Sitting with her elbow on the windowsill, she watches her faint reflection and, through that, the garden. There is something good about tilled soil, how it seems so living and buzzing, and such a deeper and more fruitful brown. It goes well with the chicken-wire fencing, the sunhat sat on a cobble, and the shovel and rake leaned against the shutters. Past that, there is the stump where she cuts the logs, and the axe-blade sunk into the wood. And, there is the shed with it's newly-painted trim and the stacks of firewood strapped to the wall.

In the shade of a stalk of kale, she sees a little worm poking it's peachy head above the dirt, bobbing up and down. Then there is a little hummingbird zipping by, with it's wings fluttering like an insect's, and sticking it's needle-like beak into a lillie. Further across the yard, she sees a couple of dragonflies gliding through the dandelions with that mystical way of theirs. Almost near the forest-line, there is a family of white rabbits stood up on their haunches, looking out across the grass.

In the garden, they grow everything they can. The kale was introduced to them by their doctor friend who said it's a superfood. They began to grow chamomile five years ago after they discovered it helped put the children to bed. The rhubarb started on accident, when her husband brought home the wrong seeds from the market, but it worked out because their daughter loves to chew rhubarb when she gets home from school. It also makes for great pies.

Speaking of pies, their son's favorites are squashberry and chokeberry. A few springs ago, they tore up the grass lining the back-wall of the house and planted berry-bushels. Sometimes, when baking berry pies, she'll mix in crabapples from the tree sitting out by the shed. Near the ginkgo forest, there is a small grove of junipers where the children like to play house and collect the stone-like berries to use as their own currency. Recently, they'd arranged to plant a maple tree, to harvest the syrup, but her husband got a promotion and the plan was discarded.

They also grow carrots in a garden-plot. To keep the rabbits away, they placed a genjutsu barrier that she re-sets every week or whenever it occurs to her. In the next plot over, they grow potatoes. In the plot after that, pumpkins of which their children pick out two every autumn to carve faces into and set out on the front walk. And, in a small corner-plot they grow red, yellow and green peppers. When their children were't yet conceived, they grew hops in that plot and attempted to brew in the basement, but the beers always turned out too sour.

For the rest of their foods, they go to the street-markets where they buy the flours and rices and beans and teas and wines and eggs and fishes and poultries and greens, and also the olive oil and butter and sugar. Then, they buy the spices at little shop next to the tailor's; salt, pepper, paprika, and oregano are the usual flavors, but lately their son asks for cayenne. At the markets, they also purchase chocolate coins for the children, tea-ware when their's chips or shatters, quilts and linens, little dolls and bead-work, and whatever else they need or want or peaks their interest.

Twice now, they've attempted to purchase a goat, but both times work got in the way. Three times they've talked about building a coop and buying a few hens and a rooster. At first, it was frustrating to have to talk about a project several times before it happened. But, as their children grew, they realized that's just how it goes.

Neither had much house-work experience before getting married. She grew up in a noble family and so the help did all the gardening and house repairs and dug the koi ponds and washed the floors and all that. Meanwhile, he grew up alone, a child with an apartment to himself. Sometimes, he'd come home and find the broken door-hinge fixed, or the toilet unclogged, or even the floorboards scrubbed and the clothing laundered.

At first, they tried to take it in turns and they pinned a calendar to the refrigerator which declared who cleaned what on which days. But, as their children were born, the work became more fluid and they learned to sometimes just let the mail sit in the mailbox and the dust to sit on the surfaces and the hinges to squeak.

The list stayed on the fridge for almost two years before either of them realized they didn't use it anymore. Even so, the work was still even between them. If mama's busy breastfeeding then papa can unclog the toilet. If papa's changing diapers then mama can change the batteries in the carbon monoxide detectors.

But then, the kids started school, and a few years after, he got a promotion and began working longer hours. Mama cooked the food and washed the clothes and fixed the hinges and dusted the furniture and helped with the homework and took the kids to their practices and re-painted the trim and re-placed the shingles and re-grouted the bathroom tiles and cut the firewood and swept the chimney and worked the garden, she tilled the soil and planted the tomatoes and onions and radishes and plucked the weeds and re-set the genjutsu barriers and mended the chicken-wire and decided to stop mowing the lawn or trimming the hedges or chasing the squirrels away from the bird-feeder. She learned to be expeditious.

As the family adjusted to the new dynamics, the children grew older and stayed in their rooms for longer periods of time or didn't always come home right after school. Unconsciously, the kids started walking themselves to training and friend's houses and when they get home they quietly do their chores and often make their own breakfasts and pack their own lunches.

Now, several times a week, she finds herself suddenly sat on the couch in a quiet house, staring out at the garden through her faint reflection on the window-pane.

Of course, she also watches the flower-beds. They sit in plots of tilled soil closest to the windows because, when their first child was born, they wanted to be able to look at all the flowers while still keeping an eye on him.

Or, as her husband says, 'we gotta watch the cave door.'

Then, their second child was born and they named her after the flower they'd most recently planted. In the back of the plot sits a wall of sunflowers, they reach out over the rest and their thick heads wave in the breezes that roll down from the rooftop. The sunflower is the only one that she never presses into her scrapbooks.

Sometimes, she has trouble pressing the water lilies and the daffodils because of their trumpet-shape, and the peonies are just so small. The bluebells and hyacinths she sells to her florist friend. And, the tulips she pots in little vases and places them in high enough places so that the cat does not knock them over. Then, there are the jonquil and amaryllis which she digs up and re-plants in pots along the front walk to break-up the monotony of the hastas. Always, she presses the asters, chrysanthemums, dahlias and marigolds.

As for the dandelions, ragworts, and thistle; so long as they don't grow in the flower-beds they are left to flourish. Their lawn is pockered with the yellow dandelion heads and the grasses grow tall and whip-like.

'A healthy lawn is a flourishing lawn,' she tells her husband. And, when she learned that the smell of freshly cut grass is basically just the grass screaming, warning the other grasses about impending doom - well, she sold the lawnmower that same afternoon.

Laughing softly, Hinata lifts her elbow from the windowsill. Rubbing the red-mark, she feels some flicker of dread and looks off towards the stairs leading to the children's bedrooms. She hear a series of giggles through the walls and the sound of video-game explosions. Then, she looks back at the flowers and is greeted by the cavalcade of memory.

Flowers remind her of sugar, for some reason she cannot ascertain. Perhaps it has to do with the sweetness of both, as a flower is often sweet-smelling and sugar is often sweet-tasting. As for the sugar, it reminds her of several things. If it's a cube, then she thinks about the horses she rode once as a child when she accompanied her father out of the village. From there, her memories fan outwards towards her mother and her sister and her cousin. Always, though, flowers and sugar and horses end up at her daughter.

In fact, many, many things remind her of her daughter. Dusty hand-mirrors, combs full of hair, sewing needles and pinholes, the creaky step on the staircase, the way the books look on the shelf, that set of ornamental chopsticks with painted red dragons. That stone bridge which arches over the river and the sound the water makes as it laps against the underside. That vast field of yellow grass near the graveyard that sways in one motion with every wind that rolls down from the monument. The gnarled roots of that willow tree in the park that is bent at such an angle that it likes like a throne.

Then, there are all the things that remind her of her son.

Lost thimbles, leaky pipes, goose-down pillows, the sound of vacuum cleaners and running faucets. Whenever somebody plays a harmonica. Whenever she sees graffiti on some fence or wall that has been painted over in a color slightly different than that original paint. The chattering bustle of the marketplace every Sunday morning. The font on the sign of her friend's weapon's shop. The large button of her old blouse that broke off and she placed inside a little drawer with plans to sew it later. Knitting reminds her of her son, the way the yarn feels, the way a scarf or a cap grows heavier and gains form over time. Then there is the front gate of the city with it's peeling red paint. The way wind sometimes tricks off the surface of the nearby lake. And, the way the yolk of an egg tries to break apart when she cooks breakfast.

Even if she tries to list everything that reminds her of her children, she never could because, really, everything does. Every line of thought, every little glance or noticed object or shape or angle or scent or movement goes back to her son and her daughter.

And, hovering with it all, is her husband who is also always present in her mind but in a different way, in a less routinely panic stricken way. It's as though his edges are scrubbed. Since his promotion he's become less present in her life and in that way even more noticeable but less stark.

He is like the structure of a room, wallpaper and ceiling beams, door-frames and windowsills, carpeting and closet doors, while her children are like all the things inside the room. The things inside are what she sees first upon stepping in, but it's the structure that holds it all, that exists in the periphery of everything.

As for the rest of her family and friends, the dead and the living, they stand in a different sort of plane, now. Another thing she learned, after marrying and having children, is that you separate from the people important to you because now you have people more important to you. You have little lives to take care of, and so the old friends, and even the old family, that once filled up your daily life, they drift to the edges as you and your husband and your two children huddle together in the middle. If her children are everything inside the room, and her husband is the room itself, then all the others must be everything outside the room, just past the slightly ajar door.

These old friends are almost like absences because they don't pass through her day-to-day as often or in the same way that her husband and children do. With that, they also exist within the presence of those very children.

Whenever she sees her son staring longingly out some window, she also sees her cousin doing the same. Or, when she sees him training in the yard, she might also see, in her mind's eye, her sister or her father training with him. When she sees her daughter dashing out the front walk, she sees her old teammates leaving for a mission. Or, when her daughter hosts imaginary conversations in her bedroom, she might imagine her grandfather or her mother sat in the little chairs and drinking the invisible tea alongside all the stuffed animals.

And, of course, when her husband walks in the door, he greets her with a kiss and a hug but also greets her with a host of unintended memories; their old classmates in the Academy, the missions they went on with their teammates and teachers, the people they met in the mandatory therapy sessions after the war, and even the nights spent in bars or in friend's apartments, already reminiscing in their twenties.

Even before the children, the memories flowed. But it was not until her son was born that she felt she lost the ability to contemplate and sort out her feelings, to think about anything at all except her child. There was simply no time for it. The constant panic would not allow it. This was nothing like the war.

By the time she bore her second child, she was almost used it, and almost used to being pregnant and then giving birth and the massive wash of empathy and endorphins and that overwhelming feeling of love, the new and the ancient. As her child's fingers and toes were counted, she laid there breathing, feeling, full of sweat and pleasant emptiness and some newfound knowledge that she is nothing like she was just yesterday.

But then, upon riding the wheelchair out the hospital doors, the rush of air and noise and all those people in the streets going about their lives as if they didn't even know a new child was just brought into the world; the panic re-emerged. Even though they'd already successfully raised a baby into toddler-hood, they suddenly doubted themselves all over again. How could their doctor friend just let them go home like this? With this tiny human they had to take care of, how could anyone expect this to go well?

As the months went, she felt like a walking machine whose memories lie shallow and withering in the back of her mind, appearing only in bits before being overwhelmed by panic, the cries of her children, the random sense of imminent danger and ocean-sized hope that accompanies every little noise they make, or little clenching grip, or little crawl across the carpet or spare glance in any direction.

It never ceased nor abated, not even in sleep. She'd dream about her children. Then, she'd wake up and check on them. If she ever had a spare moment, she'd catch herself daydreaming about them, about their futures and what they might accomplish. The more she expected of them the harder it got and the more the mess of feelings overwhelmed her. She couldn't even go out to the market without every bit of input reminding her of her children and some regret she already had or some regret she didn't have yet but was pretty sure she would.

And, there was her husband, walking out the door to work, walking back in when the sun had long set, missing all the important parts of their life together: the passing conversations between loads of laundry, the ways their children try to get out of going to school, the odd satisfaction of packing a lunchbox.

Somewhere between the constant flurry of housework and the afternoons spent listening to audiobooks in the kitchen, she paused and realized she got used to this life. As if she learned how to breathe underwater. Several times a day the panic still attacks her, but she finds she can just grit her teeth and keep going, or she can scream into a pillow, stand up, wash her face, and go cook breakfast or tend the garden or stitch a sleeve.

She still remembers the exact afternoon everything became okay. She was like she is now, staring out the window at the garden. The sunlight seemed so wet, so glistening and white as it lay against the petals and the windowsill and her forearm and the coffee table. She turned to look at the house and saw it empty of people but full of presence. Her children were with her husband that afternoon, he insisted on taking them out to the park so she could rest. After they left, the house became quiet except the odd noise of the wood settling and the clock ticking on the wall. She stared out the window, at the flower petals and the little pollinating bees and the dragonflies hovering about. In a flurry of movement, she pushed herself off the couch and grabbed her shawl from the back of a dining room chair and a sunhat from the rack near the door.

She caught up with them in the park near the graveyard and walked with them around the lake and soon they stopped to eat little sandwiches and strawberries in the shade of juniper trees. Although her sense of panic ebbed and flowed as the children raced around, disappearing past a dip in the hill then reappearing on the other side; it was suddenly manageable. She felt so removed, almost angelic, because she knew that her body would act on it's own. Parenting had become a muscle memory. She trusted herself.

And, she realized that she and her husband were children once and although they went to war and came back, they were adults now and they were happy enough. And, she realized the same is true for all their friends. Even the trees and the flowers in the garden, and the little animals that peer in from the forest, and the little birds that stop by the feeder hanging off the porch, and the little spiders and pill-beetles that roam about the corners of the walls. The same is true for them, too. They were children once and they grew up and now they're okay.

As they held hands, walking when their children walked and stopping when their children stopped, they talked about whatever drifted through their minds and they watched their children playing tag around the walkways in the park and catching baby turtles on the lake-shore and playing a game in the graveyard where they had to find names that rhyme.

As the afternoon gave way, the air became chillier and their children got bleary-eyed and sluggish. She looked at her husband with a small, quiet smile, like some passing secret or inside joke. He grinned and broke out laughing, and she laughed, too.

Then, they took the children back home, put them to bed, and talked quietly in the breakfast nook, then on the couch in the living room, then in the bed in their bedroom. The fractured, healed, complex space between spouses, that way two people look into each-others eyes until the eyes become just clusters of cells, maybe because everything has already been revealed. And, when everything has been revealed, when the space between spouses has been cleared and cleaned, only what is real remains; love and the day-to-day.

"That's right," she says as the hummingbird pulls out from the lillie and glides away, and the little worm sinks it's head back under the soil, and some stray breeze moves the petals of the peonies.

From down the hall, she hears a door open and then shut. She recognizes the cadence of her son's routine. She hears her daughter shout something from upstairs and then her little footsteps plodding down the stairs and that half-pause while she avoids the creaking step.

Pushing herself off the windowsill, she stands up and stretches and watches as her daughter bursts into the room and her son appears around the corner down the hall.

"Is daddy home?" she asks. Hinata smiles and picks her up and her daughter giggles and her son watches them from down the hall before walking over.

"It's not time, yet," he grumbles. Hinata feels a twinge in her chest and her smile stiffens, but she looks off towards the rest of the house and sees the rafters in the ceiling, the wallpaper pressed clean and even. Pinned to the wall is that sign he purchased at a yard sale when they started dating, _No Ramen, No Life._

Laughing, she looks off towards the front door and her son watches her.

"Let's play a board game while we wait," she says and her daughter shouts an agreement and wiggles out from her mother's arms while her son smiles and takes a seat behind the coffee table.


End file.
